Romance novels is weird

[msmcknittington]

In the current trashy book I'm reading (which is "Angel" by Johanna Lindsay -- so old it's got a Fabio clinch stepback for a cover), there's something that's just bugging me a lot. I take it for granted that the heroes in romance novels are supposed to be phenomenally handsome and virile to a fault. That's just the way it goes and probably the way it's gonna go for as long as there are books about twue wuv! between a silly girl and a powerful guy.

But this book just isn't conveying the whole hot dude thing to me. It's got that tradition of early '90s romances where the hero's hair is disreputably long, he's domineering* at first but has a change of heart when he realizes he wuvs! the heroine, he shoots people for a living . . . so it's got all the tenets of your basic Western romance novel. Bad dude meets good girl, add trouble, shake vigorously, and the end result is a cocktail of love. Except for one thing.

The gosh-darn hero is described as constantly wearing a bright yellow slicker/raincoat. Over all black clothing, natch. So every time the slicker is mentioned, instead of imagining some really handsome dude in a raincoat, I imagine this guy. Only more bumblebee-y.

Not good, Johanna Lindsay. Not good.

_{*Seriously, who finds someone who's constantly trying to control your actions, telling you you're wrong, and is insanely jealous a good life mate? Why did that cliché persist so long in romantic fiction? Drives me nuts!}

Comments

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

FISHSTICKS.

I will never be able to look at another Johanna Lindsay book again. A'tall.

giggles insanely

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

Yes, fishsticks! Not sexy. Sea captains are kind of sexy, but not the Gorton's fish guy. More like "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" or the Napoleonic Wars.

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

*swoon* Love those 1795 reg naval uniforms!

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

Mmm, 'xactly. Dear Jack Aubry, ever so hotter than mopey-pants Hornblower.

[zyada.livejournal.com]

"A'tall"

Yep, you've been reading Ms. Lindsay.

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

*smirk*

God, that annoys the crap out of me.

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

I didn't pick up on that in this book. Huh. Maybe she didn't use it. But, yes, that would drive me batty.

I'm more of a Amanda Quick girl, m'self. Well, and categories that I grab at thrift stores for a quarter. I don't read a lot of Lindsay.

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

She is very prolific and, I think, started with the a'tall crap about six or seven books ago. That's when they became wallbangers and I stopped reading her.

Have you tried Mary Balogh? Her stand-alones are better than the series books. I think "No Man's Mistress" and the other mistress book I'm blanking on the title of at the momentIHATETHAT are two of her best. Julia Quinn is more to my taste than Amanda Quick.

I read, uh, a lot of 'market research,' having written one in my twenties.

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

This book is from 1992, so I'm guessing it predates the a'tall by quite a few books.

I have Mary Balogh on my to-read list, should I ever stumble across any of her books at my secondhand book haunts. Somebody else recommended her to me -- probably someone at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Great romance fiction blog. Maybe I'll have to see what I can find on PaperbackSwap.

You wrote one? Awesome! Any chance you'll cough up the title? *nudgenudge*

ETA: Heck, I'd settle for genre and plot synopsis.

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

Back in the mid-80s I wrote an 80,000 word murder mystery set in 1816. It was tightly plotted-- it took place in four days. One of the people in our writing group was a English professor at our local junior college, and she kept us all in line, so to speak. She has since published two or three novels, I think.

The main suspect, heir to the victim's earldom, forces the prime witness into marriage to silence her. A wife cannot testify against her husband because she is chattel. Drama ensues... it is both romance and murder mystery and hence difficult to sell. It's also in need of one final re-write.

I worked in banking at the time and gave a copy of the completed draft to one of my customers, an attorney, to read. A year later after ditching banking and the retail world for escrow, I found myself laid off due to a real estate downturn. I answered a wanted ad for a trainee legal secretary, and when I stood up to meet the attorney, the first words out of my mouth were, "Well, Lou, have you read my novel yet?"

He hired me on the spot. And that's how I got into the legal world-- but I never did attempt to publish that novel.

Every time I try to give it that extra five thousand words it needs to make it a polished, marketable prospect, it kills a hard drive. The third time it did that, I turned my attentions elsewhere to other shiny things.

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

Ah, bummer that it crashes your computer. I get a kick out of reading things by people I know, because I like being able to talk to authors about their books when not standing in line for a book signing.

It sounds like it should sell well. Most romances in the Regency subgenre has a mystery plot to them.

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

It has a borderline non-consensual secks scene that was acceptable in the 80s and isn't so much now.

The marriage has to be consummated otherwise she can have it annulled and he's back at square one, vulnerable to her testimony. She likes him (wink wink, we're talking romance after all), but she's definitely bulldozed into it.

So I, as an author, have some mixed feelings about it, too-- because that scene is a major plot point. ::points down to the comment re: Catherine Coulter::

And Larry Niven read it, when he was making a pass at me at a con a long time ago. Pfui. "Well done. Too many adverbs."

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

*snort* I'm going to start carrying excerpts of the novel I'm working on with me when I go out. That way, when a guy comes up to me and say, "Hi. My name's Steve. Can I buy you a drink?" I can say, "Sure! But you've got to read this first."

Oh, wait. I don't go out anymore. Shoot!

The book I'm reading now is a Julie Garwood from 1988 that was republished in 2006. There are two scenes in it that is basically marital rape, which I was not expecting at all. I thought it was written more recently, so major WTF? moment.

I think you could still make a non consensual sex scene in a modern novel work, given that there is either not too much hidden pleasure on the part of the heroine (I'm terrified! Oops, orgasm!) or she was drunk. Not that date rape is acceptable or anything, but I think women today would be more willing to suspend their disbelief for a situation with impaired judgment than one that's straight-up rape.

Don't become Catherine Coulter, Ciorstan. I don't know how she sleeps at night.

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

It worked. It was harder than hell to write because it was very complex seduction rather than... not. And there was brandy involved, funny you should mention that.

I wouldn't mind Catherine Coulter's pay, but you're right, I think Laurell K. Hamilton should sleep better at night. She might have jumped the shark at Obsidian Butterfly and all her books are now thinly disguised shark-humping, but you know that when you're going in. I stopped reading LKH the book after OB, because...eww.

Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick earns about $2M a year, last time I heard, about ten years ago. I'm sure it's more now. She typically writes two books a year.

[bklynwebgrrl.livejournal.com]

I almost spit my tortorlini out at my computer when I saw the picture of the fisherman.

I hear ya... what romantic guy wears a yellow rain coat? Everyone knows true manly men heros wear london fog or one of those australian outback all-weather trench coats.

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

You should have seen my face the first time I read the slicker description!

A drover's coat? Yeah, those are pretty cowboy-hot.

[bklynwebgrrl.livejournal.com]

I had this idea for years that I wanted to marry an Australian sheep farmer. I like sheep. I could raise sheep. And I have a weakness for accents.

Something happened though since I ended up with a German auto mechanic.

Go figure.

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

I had this idea when I was in high school that I'd never marry a farmer, but the idea is looking better the longer I'm at home.

Is your husband German German, or only German by ethnicity?

[bklynwebgrrl.livejournal.com]

ethnicity... a few generations in now.

i'm second generation

Because this has been rattling around in my brain.

[zyada.livejournal.com]

What you are describing in regards to the heroes is called the alpha male syndrome, and I've seen romance sites talk about whether the men have to be Alpha male or not. I think Alpha-male is more predominant in the more overtly porn trashy novels.

IMO, Johanna Lindsey is one of the better of the girl-porn writers, but that isn't saying much. I could only stand Lindsey's males because her heroines (usually) give as good as they get. The "A'tall" stuff is in her Georgian/regency period books - her version of witty conversation, I think. But probably more than that, I hadn't really found any better writers when I was reading her stuff, and she's not a really bad writer - at least compared to some of the writers out there. I'm absolutely sure that Harlequin pays it's writer to be deliberately bad.

If you prefer Amanda Quick, you would probably prefer the regency sub-genre. This is about the only romance sub-genre I read anymore - there's a lot of fascinating cultural changes going on, and most of the good writers are interested in those changes and how they affect the people who lived then. I've noted at least one university professor of English literature and one professor of history among the regency authors. Also, I find that the Regency authors are more likely to make their hero and heroine intelligent and witty, instead of good looking.


In the regency group, you can usually go by publisher to tell which books are more likely to be good. Harlequin is c&*%, and Sihlouette isn't much better. Zebra is a gamble - they get some really bad authors and some really good ones. Signet is the best by far - they usually steal proven authors from other publishers.

Of authors, my favorites are Mary Jo Putney, Jo Beverly, Barbara Metzger and Carla Kelly. Barbara Metzger is just a fun writer, she's not so much on the cultural details but her wordplay is great. The others are good authors and do their research.


BTW, I do NOT like Mary Balogh. Her plotting is great, but she has a weirdly impersonal writing style that grates on my nerves. I do recommend that you read one of her stories, and see if you can tell what I mean.

And don't ever read Catherine Coulter. She has a rape fetish.

Re: Because this has been rattling around in my brain.

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

I knew there was a name for it! It's been a while since I've done any reading of crit lit about romance novels that wasn't second-wave feminist torchburning.

I don't think Harlequin pays its writers to be bad; I've read a couple Harlequins that were surprisingly competent. Rae Muir's first novel, The Pearl Stallion, was pretty good. It's, of course, set in the Regency period and involves the sea trade from India and the Orient. I've actually re-read it more than once, despite the alpha-male hero.

Anyway, I think Harlequin attracts a lot of first-time writers or readers who don't care especially for strong writing; I do believe most of their sales come from subscriptions and not bookstore or grocery store sales. I also think that the editors look first at genre -- hence all the "Greek Tycoon's Baby" titles -- and then at writing. They're more interested in what they can put on the cover than what goes in between.

I do read a lot of Regencies -- the authors have a dedication to historical detail that isn't found in medievals or Westerns, which are the other two subgenres I dip into.

Medievals are all basically porn-y fairy tales. There's one author who writes medievals and claims to have cites for all the things that occur in her books. I laugh whenever I hear about her, because if she's got cites for them, then I'm Santa Claus. She has way minor nobility running around in velvets and silks and freaking-fracking cotton, which didn't become commonplace in Europe until the 18th century.

I agree that Signet usually has the best historicals, period. Zebra swings so widely either way that you can't tell until you're actually reading it.

I have read all of those authors except Carla Kelly, who I've never heard of before. I love Barbara Metzger -- she's so much fun! My favorite by her is "The Hourglass." It's fantasy-esque; the hero was a minion of the Devil, but then he won a bet with the Devil and got to return to life.

I read a couple of Catherine Coulter books last summer (they were a quarter!) and . . . shudder. I've read better fanfiction. I can't believe she's published. It was like a rollercoaster of awfulness.

Re: Because this has been rattling around in my brain.

[ciorstan.livejournal.com]

Harlequin is one of the very few houses that will read anything sent to its slush pile, which is why first-time authors have, over the years, made a point to submit-- typically without representation-- to it.

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